More Sempron, Futuremark Q&A, ATi Tweaking & Others Assorted Goodness

Welcome back folks! If you knew what's been going on behind the scenes here at HotHardware, you'd know the kind of whirlwind the past couple of weeks have been. Luckily, we've weathered to storm and can now get back to our normal everyday activities. Speaking of normal activities, this is just about when I'd normally post an afternoon update! I better get cracking...

"VALUE PROCESSORS ARE all about artful foot-dragging. They are somewhat slower versions of the familiar Athlons and Pentiums, reworked and re-branded to sell at lower prices in cheaper PCs. At the high end of the market, we get to witness an epic struggle between AMD and Intel's best processors for all-out supremacy, but in the value realm, we witness something rather different. The point isn't to beat the other guy's product at any cost; it's a high-wire act in which the performers must balance beating the other guy's performance against the possibility of cannibalizing sales of one's own more expensive products."

"The next 3DMark will use a completely new 3D engine, which dynamically builds HLSL shaders. The shaders are dynamically built and runtime compiled using the most optimal target for the hardware in use. We strongly believe that this is a structure future game-engines will be using because of its flexibility. It goes without saying that the compilations produce the exact same rendering, no matter which target. This is an absolute must for enabling objective performance comparisons."

"TweakGuides.com has released its comprehensive ATI Catalyst Tweak Guide. This guide is more than just about how to perform a few advanced tweaks with the Catalysts. Whether you use the official Catalysts or the Omega drivers, this 10-page guide has something for you. It covers the entire driver installation, setup, troubleshooting and tweaking process from start to finish. From descriptions of important video-related BIOS settings to advice on what other drivers are necessary for optimal graphics performance, how to install and set everything up, how to clean your machine out of older drivers and devices, benchmarking, overclocking and easy-to-understand descriptions of graphics options. Heck even Nvidia users will benefit from reading this guide!"

"The RedOctane Ignition is well worth the price. This pad is well designed and provides a balance for DDR players. The hard foam insert isn't going to wear-out any time soon and the surface underneath the pad is non-skid so it won't be scrunching up or sliding. And the feel of the pad is unbelievable; it's probably the most conformable pad yet."

"3R System Poseidon Liquid Cooler is an All-in-One system which require no assembly. Other than effectively bring down the CPU temperature by as much as 10 degree Celsius, it also gives you noise-free operation unlike those traditional air-cooled systems. But best of all it is so compact that you can even fit it in a Small Form Factor casing."

OK, brothers and sisters - I'm out of here! Be cool...check back soon, check back often!